FIRS Boss, Babatunde Fowler’s Wizardry
Babatunde Fowler, Executive Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, is undoubtedly one of the few heads of agencies in Nigeria who can be described as game changers under the current administration of President Muhammad Buhari.
Reports about the agency’s revenue fact sheet at the last meeting of the Federation Account Allocation Committee, FAAC, in Abuja, indicated that it pooled the sum of N4.63trn into federation purse in 11 months between January and November 2018.
Upon his appointment in 2015, tax defaulters were gripped with fears not because of the money to pay but because of the models that Fowler would use to extract and milk out unremitting taxes from them.
Perhaps, they must have heard or be familiar with his history and stellar performance when he headed the Board of Lagos State Internal Revenue Service (LIRS) between 2006 and 2015.
Within his nine years stewardship in Lagos State and over four years at the Federal, one can only say that Fowler is an erudite tax reformer.
Under his watch, Lagos State experienced a sharp increase in Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) from an average of N3.6 Billion monthly as at January, 2006 to an average of over N23 Billion monthly as at June, 2015.
He recorded improved quality of service delivery to taxpayers as well as improvement in the use of IT and other modern methods of tax administration.
He introduced unprecedented enlightenment campaigns on tax administration and education in Africa, to mention but few.
When Lagos State was running on zero allocation under former President Olusegun Obasanjo , Fowler came on board with some financial gurus to propound the theory by which the state could generate its internal income without solely depending on what was shared from the federation Account.
The model put together worked for the state as it became financially independent and a role model to many states of the federation.
